Event - Artspaces
__NOEDITSECTION__ __NOWYSIWYG__ Intro= __NOEDITSECTION__ ARTSPACES Art|Up Close|Personal December 10 to 13, 2014 Bringing together artists and the public, this exhibition celebrates the personal impact of art in our lives. ArtSpaces is an invitation to explore the meaning of art in your personal space and make it accessible. A week-long period of experimental construction will allow you to experience the power of walking through transformative spaces. Share in the passion, innovation, and profound impact of the creative experience. Stratton Yacht Club is the proud sponsor of ArtSpaces 2014. All proceeds benefit the Strattwood Foundation, bringing art and cultural development to at-risk youth. Performances by artists and musicians occur each evening at 7 PM. Capacity limited to 100 persons per performance. Light refreshments will be served. |-| Donated= __NOEDITSECTION__ Written by Ophelia, representing collaborations and NPC contributions. - Lifelines = __NOEDITSECTION__ 'Lifelines' This space is a large square, enclosed on three sides. Plastic tubing winds downwards from the ceiling, a sterile plunge running into the stooped figure hunched on itself. The broad shoulders and roughly shaped curve of the spine suggest a man. Crude muscles and proportions emerge from greyish, unfinished skin. Long arms, powerfully built, stretch forth to the sides of the space in a supplicant's posture. Long wounds rent his inner wrists, needles breaking through the skin to pump fluids onto the hung canvases. Great arterial sprays of stark blue, the shade of woad war-paint of the ancient Britons, glisten on an abstract gradient. From broad fingers flow a melange of oils, the spectrum varying from cadmium yellow to warm greens, pumped out in time to the beat of his heart. The wheezing bellows echo through the space. A heartbeat, a drumbeat, the gasp of air, the pressure of a compressor -- it could be any or none. Every so often the stationary figure moves, convulses, throwing splattered sweeps onto the prepared displays. Charcoal smudges resolve into actual figures and landscapes, each of them dissolving into the raw materials that pour straight out of his body. The harshest is the livid scarlet blood drawn from his veins and applied in a sticky mass over the presented pieces. OOC Note: Most of that blood is most definitely paint, but there is also real blood (animal) in small quantities worked in. - Magnetic = __NOEDITSECTION__ 'Magnetic' This exhibition is curiously lacking walls except a white cloth that creates an artificial barrier which guests enter through. They step into the workshop of the designer-artist who created the display. Rough wooden floorboards, scarred by age and marked by paint, stretch out along a rectangular space. Low sawhorses wired and bolted to the ground make a physical barrier to the explosion of hanging objects. Saws, brushes, and lathes hang from invisible wire, mounted ceiling to floor. They seem frozen in time, an onward rushing explosion of sharpened metal and purposed wooden tools. Their placement simulates the speedlines of cartoons and comic books. Though placed in straight rows, they seem to converge inwards upon a man shaped outline, angled downwards towards his head and filling in the void. The effect is like shrapnel launched at him, arrows shot from an unseen source behind the viewer. Art is made into a weapon, and the target the artist himself. - My Son's Eyes = __NOEDITSECTION__ 'My Son's Eyes' Imagine IKEA designed a tiny apartment and let a 5-year-old protege decorate it. A total absence of sharp corners and linear arrangements stands out. Everything about this living space exudes brilliant energy and sensory engagement. The bright blue walls practically bend and flex, softened angles resembling some kind of alien dancer. Shelves emerge along organic curves and lines, housing whimsical plates and cups, rolled-up linens in primary colours that won't detract from the block-print paint. Wobbly white ceramic tiles at shoulder height sweep around round windows and blobby mirrors. Palms and bushy plants spill out from holes and built-in pots, spilling over chains of bright colour. The rolling floor dips and sways underfoot in gentle oceanic swells. Green tiles fitted together glitter under the irregular lamps fit into kidney-bean recesses on the ceiling. Every archway features embedded portraits in whimsical shapes, some canvases and frames waiting to be filled. Rainbow sand swirls through the round kitchen table under a thick plastic cover, a hand-operated crank spinning and churning the place settings as much as the contents. Swings hang from the ceiling, pencil crayons and fat brushes loaded with paint thrust through the supportive ropes. - Playground = __NOEDITSECTION__ 'Playground|Soundplay' Visitors are confronted upon entrance by a wall. A vast sea of rainbow polka dots applied with the blunt ferocity of childhood peppers the glaring whiteness, smothering it, burying and chopping up the sterile surface under a sea of splotched marks. Purple waves around yellows and greens with no consideration for space or boundaries. Some of the blots are thrown atop one another. Others keep to a grid pattern, spaced evenly, then tapering off into a mad phantasmagoria of hammered half dots and squashed shapes. Orange is a blight swimming over the corners, kept at bay by a parade of red circles plunked on the wall with such force the paint peels off, the stickers curl at the corners. Where they rip open, yanked away by visitors, sounds pour forth: the laugh of a baby, the giggle of a child up to mischief, the story of a boy who is holding back the tide of 'Bad Orange,' the girl filling the white with the love for her grandma, and grandma is purple like pie. - Suspension = __NOEDITSECTION__ 'Suspension of Disbelief' A ladder is needed to access this piece, a vast web of mesh wires anchored to the ceiling of the grand room. Like a cobweb, guests spring and step across the suspended net. Docents ensure no more than four people at a time walk on the diamond lattice of metal and clear plastic sheathing. Light shoots through the display at arrhythmic variables, dancing from violent to hot pink to white. Iridescent bubbles are anchored in space, fat PVC blobs that people can climb and roll across, their reflections caught in the glistening surfaces of the plastic balls. Viewers down below are transposed onto the PVC bubbles, mingling with the distorted images of guests on the net. - Watchwords = __NOEDITSECTION__ 'Watchwords' This space is tight -- not intimate, not snug, breathless. Walls narrow in subtly to a claustrophobic confines. Flickering fluorescent lights and screens underfoot project challenge eyes to focus. The shutter-stop quality emphasizes every jittery gesture, makes them harsher and violent. Narrow beams project scrawling text messages onto the wall, private conversations on display. Lovers exchange profane suggestions while parents quarrel, friends set up dates, and fights tumble in 140 characters or less. Numbers dash across screens to pry deeper into the personal. The visions reflected in two dozen screens of various sizes monitor every aspect of life: a bar, a busy street in Crowninshield, a shop, inside someone's living room, perched over the yacht club entrance. Everywhere people come and go, oblivious and tolerant; a blind eye turned to the watchful eyes. The viewer might see themselves on film, hear their voice broadcast through the white noise whispering with humming resonance just at the threshold of hearing. One parabolic microphone hangs suspended from the ceiling on a black cord, bisected and ripped apart, then stitched back together with the thirteen colonial stripes of the flag. The tiny print of names and addresses, run through a shredder countless times, forms the cord and drips over. }} |-| Durante= __NOEDITSECTION__ These items were sponsored by Durante. - Imaginary Friends = __NOEDITSECTION__ 'Imaginary Friends' Children greet a specially designed space down the children's wing of Artspaces with squeals of delight. A dog is there to greet them. The dog is fluffy and adorable, of course, as it runs from the children for a bit, stops, turns around and playfully barks at them before running again. A few of the children actually manage to catch up to the dog and try and grab it, yet nothing happens as their arms simply pass through. This might lead some to look up to find a hologram projector slowing turning in a circle around the room. A closer examination reveals the puppy the children are chasing is actually a recording of a real puppy set on a loop as the holographic projector gives the appearance of it running around the room. Some children become disappointed and stop realizing the dog isn't real, while others still try to catch it anyway as though they were special and might get the real one. - Love = __NOEDITSECTION__ 'Love ' Entering the 'Adult Only' section of the art festival, the central exhibit is the first thing seen by most. The exhibit consists of what appears to be three pairs of statues. The first depicts a man which looks to be made of steel and a woman made of bronze. Their pose is quite provocative, yet also loving and gentle. The next are two female statues made of bronze in a similar state, the final pair a pair of male statues seemingly made of steel. All are on the same platform, equally spaced apart acting as the corners of a triangular formation. All the statues are fully nude with a life-life quality as they must have been based on actual people. The plaque on the platform reads simply: Love. Whether looking around at the other exhibits, talking to others nearby, or simply blinking there are times the statues seem to move, yet largely the poses seem unchanged. At least till there is that fraction of a second. A shift, a turn, the barely perceptible drop of a knee, the slight thrust inwards that wasn't there before. The slight rotation or pivot. These are not statues, but people wearing metal body paint, even their body hair has been painted, extra care taken to ensure the illusion of metal is not lost. No doubt precautions have been made so the 'living statues' remain healthy. The exhibit's purpose seems to be to show that regardless of one's desires or interests, love is love. The paint makes it harder to determine the ethnicity of the individuals, but that is likely part of the exhibit. Any who watch the trio of couples long enough will notice they are actually taking part in sexual acts, just at an incredibly slow rate. Their expression might differ every so often but its clear each couple are individuals who are genuinely in love with their partner and wish to show that love to one another, even if they are being watched. }} |-| Ovidio= __NOEDITSECTION__ On a pedestal made from pink cream marble from china lovingly crafted to snugly fit a custom glass tank filled with water floats motionlessly the circuatory system of a human being On the sides of the marble base, the words "life is death is life is death is..." are repeated and looped in on itself in a slight tilt to the words superficially seem to be neat rows but following the words show they spiral from the top to the bottom of the marble base. This piece, unlabelled, has a glass plaque villed with a viscous, blood-like substance with the following acid etched on it: "We are one people and can never be anything else. Please consider being a blood and organ donor to save the lives we all hold so precious." Category:History Category:Events